atticus wrote:The United Nations website tells us that the United Nations is made up of 193 Member States.

A state is a political unit. 'Country' is a word with potential for ambiguity in this context. I di not think that the distinction you are trying to make is a valid one.

So you're taking the word used by the UN as the applicable gospel, are you? I fail to understand why. The UN is discredited organization whose hierarchy lives a grandiose, high-spending lifestyle financed by others - primarily the USA. In my opinion the UN should have been disbanded years ago, with the exception perhaps of the one or two small elements within it which actually produce something useful to the world.

When there's real trouble in the world, its staff cannot get away from such scenarios fast enough, abandoning the locals to their fate.

Kofi Annan's conduct and his nepotism killed off any last vestiges of any faith I still had in the UN. Ban Ki-moon, its current Secretary-general, appears never to have done a proper job in his life.